OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Automated Machine Learning for Deep Learning based Malware Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2023
Year: 2023

Deep learning (DL) has proven to be effective in detecting sophisticated malware that is constantly evolving. Even though deep learning has alleviated the feature engineering problem, finding the most optimal DL model, in terms of neural architecture search (NAS) and the model's optimal set of hyper-parameters, remains a challenge that requires domain expertise. In addition, many of the proposed state-of-the-art models are very complex and may not be the best fit for different datasets. A promising approach, known as Automated Machine Learning (AutoML), can reduce the domain expertise required to implement a custom DL model. AutoML reduces the amount of human trial-and-error involved in designing DL models, and in more recent implementations can find new model architectures with relatively low computational overhead. This work provides a comprehensive analysis and insights on using AutoML for static and online malware detection. For static, our analysis is performed on two widely used malware datasets: SOREL-20M to demonstrate efficacy on large datasets; and EMBER-2018, a smaller dataset specifically curated to hinder the performance of machine learning models. In addition, we show the effects of tuning the NAS process parameters on finding a more optimal malware detection model on these static analysis datasets. Further, we also demonstrate that AutoML is performant in online malware detection scenarios using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) for cloud IaaS. We compare an AutoML technique to six existing state-of-the-art CNNs using a newly generated online malware dataset with and without other applications running in the background during malware execution.In general, our experimental results show that the performance of AutoML based static and online malware detection models are on par or even better than state-of-the-art models or hand-designed models presented in literature.
Dense Pixel-to-Pixel Harmonization via Continuous Image Representation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

High-resolution (HR) image harmonization is of great significance in real-world applications such as image synthesis and image editing. However, due to the high memory costs, existing dense pixel-to-pixel harmonization methods are mainly focusing on processing low-resolution (LR) images. Some recent works resort to combining with color-to-color transformations but are either limited to certain resolutions or heavily depend on hand-crafted image filters. In this work, we explore leveraging the implicit neural representation (INR) and propose a novel image Harmonization method based on Implicit neural Networks (HINet), which to the best of our knowledge, is the first dense pixel-to-pixel method applicable to HR images without any hand-crafted filter design. Inspired by the Retinex theory, we decouple the MLPs into two parts to respectively capture the content and environment of composite images. A Low-Resolution Image Prior (LRIP) network is designed to alleviate the Boundary Inconsistency problem, and we also propose new designs for the training and inference process. Extensive experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of our method compared with state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, some interesting and practical applications of the proposed method are explored. Our code is available at https://github.com/WindVChen/INR-Harmonization.
Convex Bounds on the Softmax Function with Applications to Robustness Verification
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

The softmax function is a ubiquitous component at the output of neural networks and increasingly in intermediate layers as well. This paper provides convex lower bounds and concave upper bounds on the softmax function, which are compatible with convex optimization formulations for characterizing neural networks and other ML models. We derive bounds using both a natural exponential-reciprocal decomposition of the softmax as well as an alternative decomposition in terms of the log-sum-exp function. The new bounds are provably and/or numerically tighter than linear bounds obtained in previous work on robustness verification of transformers. As illustrations of the utility of the bounds, we apply them to verification of transformers as well as of the robustness of predictive uncertainty estimates of deep ensembles.
Block Codes in Pomset Metric over $\mathbb{Z}_m$
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2023
Year: 2023

In this paper, we introduce codes equipped with pomset block metric. A Singleton type bound for pomset block codes is obtained. Code achieving the Singleton bound, called a maximum distance separable code (for short, MDS ($\mathbb{P},π$)-code) is also investigated. We extend the concept of $I$-perfect codes and $r$-perfect codes to pomset block metric. The relation between $I$-perfect codes and MDS $(\mathbb{P},π)$-codes is also considered. When all blocks have the same dimension, we prove the duality theorem for codes and study the weight distribution of MDS pomset block codes when the pomset is a chain.
AI-Empowered Hybrid MIMO Beamforming
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2023
Year: 2023

Hybrid multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is an attractive technology for realizing extreme massive MIMO systems envisioned for future wireless communications in a scalable and power-efficient manner. However, the fact that hybrid MIMO systems implement part of their beamforming in analog and part in digital makes the optimization of their beampattern notably more challenging compared with conventional fully digital MIMO. Consequently, recent years have witnessed a growing interest in using data-aided artificial intelligence (AI) tools for hybrid beamforming design. This article reviews candidate strategies to leverage data to improve real-time hybrid beamforming design. We discuss the architectural constraints and characterize the core challenges associated with hybrid beamforming optimization. We then present how these challenges are treated via conventional optimization, and identify different AI-aided design approaches. These can be roughly divided into purely data-driven deep learning models and different forms of deep unfolding techniques for combining AI with classical optimization.We provide a systematic comparative study between existing approaches including both numerical evaluations and qualitative measures. We conclude by presenting future research opportunities associated with the incorporation of AI in hybrid MIMO systems.
Multi-Plane Neural Radiance Fields for Novel View Synthesis
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Novel view synthesis is a long-standing problem that revolves around rendering frames of scenes from novel camera viewpoints. Volumetric approaches provide a solution for modeling occlusions through the explicit 3D representation of the camera frustum. Multi-plane Images (MPI) are volumetric methods that represent the scene using front-parallel planes at distinct depths but suffer from depth discretization leading to a 2.D scene representation. Another line of approach relies on implicit 3D scene representations. Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) utilize neural networks for encapsulating the continuous 3D scene structure within the network weights achieving photorealistic synthesis results, however, methods are constrained to per-scene optimization settings which are inefficient in practice. Multi-plane Neural Radiance Fields (MINE) open the door for combining implicit and explicit scene representations. It enables continuous 3D scene representations, especially in the depth dimension, while utilizing the input image features to avoid per-scene optimization. The main drawback of the current literature work in this domain is being constrained to single-view input, limiting the synthesis ability to narrow viewpoint ranges. In this work, we thoroughly examine the performance, generalization, and efficiency of single-view multi-plane neural radiance fields. In addition, we propose a new multiplane NeRF architecture that accepts multiple views to improve the synthesis results and expand the viewing range. Features from the input source frames are effectively fused through a proposed attention-aware fusion module to highlight important information from different viewpoints. Experiments show the effectiveness of attention-based fusion and the promising outcomes of our proposed method when compared to multi-view NeRF and MPI techniques.
Prior Information based Decomposition and Reconstruction Learning for Micro-Expression Recognition
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Micro-expression recognition (MER) draws intensive research interest as micro-expressions (MEs) can infer genuine emotions. Prior information can guide the model to learn discriminative ME features effectively. However, most works focus on researching the general models with a stronger representation ability to adaptively aggregate ME movement information in a holistic way, which may ignore the prior information and properties of MEs. To solve this issue, driven by the prior information that the category of ME can be inferred by the relationship between the actions of facial different components, this work designs a novel model that can conform to this prior information and learn ME movement features in an interpretable way. Specifically, this paper proposes a Decomposition and Reconstruction-based Graph Representation Learning (DeRe-GRL) model to effectively learn high-level ME features. DeRe-GRL includes two modules: Action Decomposition Module (ADM) and Relation Reconstruction Module (RRM), where ADM learns action features of facial key components and RRM explores the relationship between these action features. Based on facial key components, ADM divides the geometric movement features extracted by the graph model-based backbone into several sub-features, and learns the map matrix to map these sub-features into multiple action features; then, RRM learns weights to weight all action features to build the relationship between action features. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed modules, and the proposed method achieves competitive performance.
3D Multi-Object Tracking Based on Uncertainty-Guided Data Association
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

In the existing literature, most 3D multi-object tracking algorithms based on the tracking-by-detection framework employed deterministic tracks and detections for similarity calculation in the data association stage. Namely, the inherent uncertainties existing in tracks and detections are overlooked. In this work, we discard the commonly used deterministic tracks and deterministic detections for data association, instead, we propose to model tracks and detections as random vectors in which uncertainties are taken into account. Then, based on the Jensen-Shannon divergence, the similarity between two multidimensional distributions, i.e. track and detection, is evaluated for data association purposes. Lastly, the level of track uncertainty is incorporated in our cost function design to guide the data association process. Comparative experiments have been conducted on two typical datasets, KITTI and nuScenes, and the results indicated that our proposed method outperformed the compared state-of-the-art 3D tracking algorithms. For the benefit of the community, our code has been made available at https://github.com/hejiawei2023/UG3DMOT.
Graph-based Extreme Feature Selection for Multi-class Classification Tasks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

When processing high-dimensional datasets, a common pre-processing step is feature selection. Filter-based feature selection algorithms are not tailored to a specific classification method, but rather rank the relevance of each feature with respect to the target and the task. This work focuses on a graph-based, filter feature selection method that is suited for multi-class classifications tasks. We aim to drastically reduce the number of selected features, in order to create a sketch of the original data that codes valuable information for the classification task. The proposed graph-based algorithm is constructed by combing the Jeffries-Matusita distance with a non-linear dimension reduction method, diffusion maps. Feature elimination is performed based on the distribution of the features in the low-dimensional space. Then, a very small number of feature that have complementary separation strengths, are selected. Moreover, the low-dimensional embedding allows to visualize the feature space. Experimental results are provided for public datasets and compared with known filter-based feature selection techniques.
Exploring Machine Learning Privacy/Utility trade-off from a hyperparameters Lens
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Machine Learning (ML) architectures have been applied to several applications that involve sensitive data, where a guarantee of users' data privacy is required. Differentially Private Stochastic Gradient Descent (DPSGD) is the state-of-the-art method to train privacy-preserving models. However, DPSGD comes at a considerable accuracy loss leading to sub-optimal privacy/utility trade-offs. Towards investigating new ground for better privacy-utility trade-off, this work questions; (i) if models' hyperparameters have any inherent impact on ML models' privacy-preserving properties, and (ii) if models' hyperparameters have any impact on the privacy/utility trade-off of differentially private models. We propose a comprehensive design space exploration of different hyperparameters such as the choice of activation functions, the learning rate and the use of batch normalization. Interestingly, we found that utility can be improved by using Bounded RELU as activation functions with the same privacy-preserving characteristics. With a drop-in replacement of the activation function, we achieve new state-of-the-art accuracy on MNIST (96.02\%), FashionMnist (84.76\%), and CIFAR-10 (44.42\%) without any modification of the learning procedure fundamentals of DPSGD.
A Hybrid Approach to Full-Scale Reconstruction of Renal Arterial Network
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2023
Year: 2023

The renal vasculature, acting as a resource distribution network, plays an important role in both the physiology and pathophysiology of the kidney. However, no imaging techniques allow an assessment of the structure and function of the renal vasculature due to limited spatial and temporal resolution. To develop realistic computer simulations of renal function, and to develop new image-based diagnostic methods based on artificial intelligence, it is necessary to have a realistic full-scale model of the renal vasculature. We propose a hybrid framework to build subject-specific models of the renal vascular network by using semi-automated segmentation of large arteries and estimation of cortex area from a micro-CT scan as a starting point, and by adopting the Global Constructive Optimization algorithm for generating smaller vessels. Our results show a statistical correspondence between the reconstructed data and existing anatomical data obtained from a rat kidney with respect to morphometric and hemodynamic parameters.
Rule-based Out-Of-Distribution Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2023
Year: 2023

Out-of-distribution detection is one of the most critical issue in the deployment of machine learning. The data analyst must assure that data in operation should be compliant with the training phase as well as understand if the environment has changed in a way that autonomous decisions would not be safe anymore. The method of the paper is based on eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI); it takes into account different metrics to identify any resemblance between in-distribution and out of, as seen by the XAI model. The approach is non-parametric and distributional assumption free. The validation over complex scenarios (predictive maintenance, vehicle platooning, covert channels in cybersecurity) corroborates both precision in detection and evaluation of training-operation conditions proximity. Results are available via open source and open data at the following link: https://github.com/giacomo97cnr/Rule-based-ODD.
RAFEN -- Regularized Alignment Framework for Embeddings of Nodes
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Learning representations of nodes has been a crucial area of the graph machine learning research area. A well-defined node embedding model should reflect both node features and the graph structure in the final embedding. In the case of dynamic graphs, this problem becomes even more complex as both features and structure may change over time. The embeddings of particular nodes should remain comparable during the evolution of the graph, what can be achieved by applying an alignment procedure. This step was often applied in existing works after the node embedding was already computed. In this paper, we introduce a framework -- RAFEN -- that allows to enrich any existing node embedding method using the aforementioned alignment term and learning aligned node embedding during training time. We propose several variants of our framework and demonstrate its performance on six real-world datasets. RAFEN achieves on-par or better performance than existing approaches without requiring additional processing steps.
Artificial Intelligence for Dementia Research Methods Optimization
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Introduction: Machine learning (ML) has been extremely successful in identifying key features from high-dimensional datasets and executing complicated tasks with human expert levels of accuracy or greater. Methods: We summarize and critically evaluate current applications of ML in dementia research and highlight directions for future research. Results: We present an overview of ML algorithms most frequently used in dementia research and highlight future opportunities for the use of ML in clinical practice, experimental medicine, and clinical trials. We discuss issues of reproducibility, replicability and interpretability and how these impact the clinical applicability of dementia research. Finally, we give examples of how state-of-the-art methods, such as transfer learning, multi-task learning, and reinforcement learning, may be applied to overcome these issues and aid the translation of research to clinical practice in the future. Discussion: ML-based models hold great promise to advance our understanding of the underlying causes and pathological mechanisms of dementia.
Graph-level representations using ensemble-based readout functions
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Graph machine learning models have been successfully deployed in a variety of application areas. One of the most prominent types of models - Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) - provides an elegant way of extracting expressive node-level representation vectors, which can be used to solve node-related problems, such as classifying users in a social network. However, many tasks require representations at the level of the whole graph, e.g., molecular applications. In order to convert node-level representations into a graph-level vector, a so-called readout function must be applied. In this work, we study existing readout methods, including simple non-trainable ones, as well as complex, parametrized models. We introduce a concept of ensemble-based readout functions that combine either representations or predictions. Our experiments show that such ensembles allow for better performance than simple single readouts or similar performance as the complex, parametrized ones, but at a fraction of the model complexity.
Proximal Exploration of Venus Volcanism with Teams of Autonomous Buoyancy-Controlled Balloons
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2023
Year: 2023

Altitude-controlled balloons hold great promise for performing high-priority scientific investigations of Venus's atmosphere and geological phenomena, including tectonic and volcanic activity, as demonstrated by a number of recent Earth-based experiments. In this paper, we explore a concept of operations where multiple autonomous, altitude-controlled balloons monitor explosive volcanic activity on Venus through infrasound microbarometers, and autonomously navigate the uncertain wind field to perform follow-on observations of detected events of interest. We propose a novel autonomous guidance technique for altitude-controlled balloons in Venus's uncertain wind field, and show the approach can result in an increase of up to 63% in the number of close-up observations of volcanic events compared to passive drifters, and a 16% increase compared to ground-in-the-loop guidance. The results are robust to uncertainty in the wind field, and hold across large changes in the frequency of explosive volcanic events, sensitivity of the microbarometer detectors, and numbers of aerial platforms.
Navigates Like Me: Understanding How People Evaluate Human-Like AI in Video Games
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2023
Year: 2023

We aim to understand how people assess human likeness in navigation produced by people and artificially intelligent (AI) agents in a video game. To this end, we propose a novel AI agent with the goal of generating more human-like behavior. We collect hundreds of crowd-sourced assessments comparing the human-likeness of navigation behavior generated by our agent and baseline AI agents with human-generated behavior. Our proposed agent passes a Turing Test, while the baseline agents do not. By passing a Turing Test, we mean that human judges could not quantitatively distinguish between videos of a person and an AI agent navigating. To understand what people believe constitutes human-like navigation, we extensively analyze the justifications of these assessments. This work provides insights into the characteristics that people consider human-like in the context of goal-directed video game navigation, which is a key step for further improving human interactions with AI agents.
Adversarial Attacks on Machine Learning in Embedded and IoT Platforms
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Machine learning (ML) algorithms are increasingly being integrated into embedded and IoT systems that surround us, and they are vulnerable to adversarial attacks. The deployment of these ML algorithms on resource-limited embedded platforms also requires the use of model compression techniques. The impact of such model compression techniques on adversarial robustness in ML is an important and emerging area of research. This article provides an overview of the landscape of adversarial attacks and ML model compression techniques relevant to embedded systems. We then describe efforts that seek to understand the relationship between adversarial attacks and ML model compression before discussing open problems in this area.
Domain adaptation using optimal transport for invariant learning using histopathology datasets
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Histopathology is critical for the diagnosis of many diseases, including cancer. These protocols typically require pathologists to manually evaluate slides under a microscope, which is time-consuming and subjective, leading to interest in machine learning to automate analysis. However, computational techniques are limited by batch effects, where technical factors like differences in preparation protocol or scanners can alter the appearance of slides, causing models trained on one institution to fail when generalizing to others. Here, we propose a domain adaptation method that improves the generalization of histopathological models to data from unseen institutions, without the need for labels or retraining in these new settings. Our approach introduces an optimal transport (OT) loss, that extends adversarial methods that penalize models if images from different institutions can be distinguished in their representation space. Unlike previous methods, which operate on single samples, our loss accounts for distributional differences between batches of images. We show that on the Camelyon17 dataset, while both methods can adapt to global differences in color distribution, only our OT loss can reliably classify a cancer phenotype unseen during training. Together, our results suggest that OT improves generalization on rare but critical phenotypes that may only make up a small fraction of the total tiles and variation in a slide.